Architecture.

In The Balance

Dearborn Center Strives To Unite The Formal And The Friendly

February 13, 2000|By Blair Kamin, Tribune Architecture Critic.

Spanish superstar Ricardo Bofill is back with a new skyscraper design after his 1992 flop at 77 W. Wacker Drive, an affront to the muscular Chicago tradition whose wafer-thin stone columns look like they're pasted onto a shiny glass facade.

His latest effort, which will be the Loop's first skyscraper of the 21st Century, wisely dispenses with such postmodern applique. But it still needs considerable refinement -- and maybe even some basic rethinking -- before it can be considered worthy of its extraordinary surroundings.

Called Dearborn Center, the $305 million project will rise more than 500 feet from a long-vacant, half-block site bounded by State, Dearborn and Adams Streets. It is being built by Chicago developer J. Paul Beitler, best known for his unsuccessful 1989 bid to erect the world's tallest building here, and the Prime Group Realty Trust, Bofill's patron at 77 W. Wacker.

Beitler, who has no small ego, promises to transform the southern end of State Street's shopping district into a hub of "glitz, pizazz and showmanship." That ought to set alarm bells ringing at City Hall, given that State Street's recovery has been proceeding quite nicely, thank you, without the Times Square-ization that has blighted North Michigan Avenue.

But State Street is hardly the only issue. Dearborn Street is a living museum of the skyscraper, and the intersection of Dearborn and Adams is one of its high points. To its south rises Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Chicago Federal Center, where two high-rises and a post office frame a plaza punctuated by Alexander Calder's bright red "Flamingo" sculpture. To the north stands the prototypical late 19th Century Chicago office structure, Holabird & Roche's Marquette Building, with its robust, gridded facades.

Adams Street, for its part, has the gentle Victorian scale of the Berghoff restaurant, a much-needed contrast to the Loop's giants.

This is, in short, a context that requires an exquisite balancing act -- between the festivity of the State Street retail corridor and the formality of the Dearborn Street office center, and between the powerful geometries of the nearby landmarks and the pedestrian-friendly scale that makes downtown Chicago such an appealing place to walk. The building, in short, needs to be both strong and sensitive.

Bofill appears to be shouldering the additional burden of working for not one but two clients -- Beitler, who favors sleek, glassy buildings; and the Prime Group's Michael Reschke, who has practically made Bofill's classical pediments his corporate signature. Dearborn Center, which has been reviewed by city officials but has yet to be formally submitted to them, appears to have been crafted by a committee.

Designed in association with Chicago architect James DeStefano, the building consists of two main parts: an office tower of 37 stories along Dearborn and an office and retail portion, 11 stories tall, along State. Both have chunky proportions, and there is literally an underlying reason why: Dearborn Center will be built on the existing foundations of a 12-story Montgomery Ward store that occupied the site before it was demolished in 1985. The foundations won't support a building any taller.

While that step saves a significant chunk of money for the developers, it also poses a problem for Bofill: how to make the blocky tower look svelte. In a telephone interview from Barcelona, Bofill's partner on the project, Rogelio Jimenez, said the architects' chief "slimming device" is a curving window bay, more than 25 stories tall, that projects slightly outward from the rest of the facade. To further reduce its bulk, the building will have notched corners.

In essence, the tower follows the century-old custom of dividing a skyscraper into three parts that resemble the base, shaft and capital of a classical column. Horizontal bands of stainless steel break down the tower's scale and culminate in a cornice that caps its top. At ground level, see-through glass reveals classically inspired lobbies. The Dearborn lobby also has a modern, curving wall of red African wood and may contain an oversized replica of the famous Greek statue, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, in the Louvre museum in Paris.

But the chief difference between the State and Dearborn sides is that, on State, a huge recessed rectangle is sliced into the facade. This monumental entrance, Jimenez said, would be a "portal" to the building's shops. It would use high-technology glass to turn the grand gateway into a giant electronic sign. Beitler is said to envision a device that would vary with the holiday seasons, showing turkeys at Thanksgiving, Santa Claus at Christmas and a big heart around Valentine's Day.